GitDeltaDeploy: Version 3 Released

The GitDeltaDeploy NuGet package has just received an update which addresses a couple of things that I’ve been meaning to get to for a while.

– Rename of the NuGet package
– Compatibility with the new YML serialization format
– A fix to a known issue where the order of the ‘targets’ file was dependent on other .targets files in the project file
– Made ‘DeltaArtifactsFolder’ configurable, changing the default from ‘{project}/Report’ to ‘{project}/bin/Delta’
– The removal of redundant conditions and operations
– A demo solution setup for testing different deployment scenarios offline (using a local git repo data)

Teams can simply update their existing NuGet package, including the newly named package as the dependency. i.e You should then have the package starting with ‘SaintSkeeta.’ installed in your project.

Then you can clean up the old project (the one starting with ‘Hedgehog.’) and ensure there are no remnant files still hanging around (i.e no reference to the old package’s targets file).

GitDeltaDeploy: Version 3 – Package, Project and DLL Rename

Highlighting that GitDeltaDeploy is a Third Party Extension
As a Hedgehog (and now Sitecore) employee, I found that a number of support requests for this open-source extension were being sent to the corporate support teams at Hedgehog or Sitecore, instead of the public Git repo. I can understand why people would send support requests to Hedgehog given this is an extension of Sitecore TDS (a paid product), and from my own personal involvement with the Hedgehog and Sitecore companies.
However GitDeltaDeploy is a passion project of mine, which I work on in my own personal time. It is also open-source…not owned by Hedgehog or Sitecore… and therefore, not supported by the official TDS Support or Sitecore Support teams.

As a result, I have decided to rename the project, removing ‘Hedgehog’ from the name, and instead replacing it with ‘SaintSkeeta’ (my Github username).

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GitDeltaDeploy: Version 3 – Configurable DeltaArtifactsFolder

In GitDeltaDeploy version 3, I wanted to make the ‘output’ folder of the extension configurable.
This output folder is where the files ‘ChangedItemFiles.txt’, ‘LastDeploymentGitCommitId.txt’ are saved. Same too with ‘DeltaDeployCompare.txt’ when debugging.

In previous versions, this was declared in the .targets file in multiple locations with a hard-coded ‘$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)/Report‘ in 23 different locations.

GitDeltaDeploy v3 now has ‘DeltaArtifactsFolder’ declared at the beginning of the targets file.
By default this has been set to {project}/bin/Delta, which is a change from {project}/Report’ that it was in v2.

However the DeltaArtifactsFolder property is configurable.
Developers can configure a <DeltaArtifactsFolder> in their TdsGlobal.config file with the path they wish to use, or by passing it into the build command with /p:DeltaArtifactsFolder=PATH_TO_FOLDER

GitDeltaDeploy: Version 3 – Support for YAML Serialization

Version 3 of GitDeltaDeploy includes support for YAML serialization, which was added in TDS v6 to support the feature in Sitecore 9.2.

This feature was fairly simple to implement in the extension, by simply switching the file extension that’s used in the git diff command.

GitDeltaDeploy: Installation and Usage Considerations

To use GitDeltaDeploy and have proper delta deployments working, there are some considerations.

This includes thoughts on: –

• how developers work efficiently
• what infrastructure you use for deployments
• and how deployments are scheduled.

Here are some things to think about with your team when setting up GitDeltaDeploy.

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